Winged creatures

monoprint, tissue transparency, acrylic and ink on 10 X 11″ paper

From the heart of a tree in the dark of night

Vibration of winged breath and penetrating gaze

Rising of timber crossing a wingspan

Appearing, then disappearing with a piercing call

Wildness breaking through the night air

Nothing left but the moonlit hairs on my arms

Barn owls.  My favorite with their strange flat faces and golden glow. I traced this one from a calendar picture onto some light and textured oriental paper, then collaged it over a monoprint as a transparency (the Monday Muse Group lesson), and kept painting.

I’ve heard owls at night and sighted from a distance, or in benevolent captivity at the Bird Rescue Center, but they live in greatest wildness in the yearning of my psyche.

. . .which is why it has been so thrilling to watch the Eagle Cam in Washington that is snooping round the clock on The President and First Lady with their fluff-ball baby chicks in the nest. Do give them a visit if you haven’t already. And here is my sketch done while I was voyeuring.

Mom and Pop tag team it, so I’m not sure which one this was. He/she set to ripping apart the collosal dead fish and eating and sharing with the open beaks. There are three chicks now.  I missed the birth (crack).  Darn!

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Crazy Monoprinting

acrylic monoprint with collage on w/c paper, 10 X 11″

make human but don’t try too hard

it should come naturally

even in this tech-y age we are not Bots. . .yet

so make human

there’s no time like the present

whatever excites or worries you

that is human

own it. hash tag it. send it in email.

on its journey around the media sphere

it will make someone else human

even if they forgot they were

We played with monoprinting for a couple weeks in the Monday afternoon group, not with special printmaking inks or a press or even a real “plate” but with what we had on hand. There is such a uniquely appealing surface texture to printing like this, and there were lots of unique surprises that delighted (and at times frustrated) us.

Landscapes appeared!

And sometimes the “ghost” print was the most intriguing. Sort of landscape-y, don’t you think?

This was a “Crazy Easy Transfer Painting”.  I borrowed the idea from McElroy and Wilson’s book Surface Treatment Workshop. You paint on plastic, scraping away a design.  Let it dry, then coat your paper with polymer medium and put the plastic, paint-side-down on the paper.  Let that dry and then peal off the plastic and the paint has transfered.  Voila!  it IS crazy and easy.

This is the kind of art stuff we do all the time in the Monday Afternoon Muse Group in my studio (in Sebastopol, CA).  If you’d like to come in person,  a new 8-week series starts March 14 and there’s still openings! For more info and to register visit my website.

Flapping in the Wind

acrylic, ink, collage on w/c paper, 10 X 11″

Sometimes you need to flap in the wind, feel the ocean motion, or just notice the slow movement of sunset and sunrise and the moon’s phases. 

All this is a necessary counterpoint to rock solidity and the stuckness that keeps you laboring year after year in silly blind repetition, following rules that have stopped serving.

Let that wind blow them away, and watch as a new breeze deposits the next stepping stone right at your feet.

I had loaded a brayer with copper paint and then black and then gesso to make an underpainting and paint some collage papers.  It takes a lot of paint if you’re going to roll it on.  But I’d squeezed out a lot more than I needed.  So I wet a clean sheet of watercolor paper and pressed it onto the juicy palette.  That was the beginning.  It sat in a stack of “beginnings” for a couple weeks, then inspired another approach.